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Humane Society CEO search reignites euthanasia debate

The departure of the Michigan Humane Society's longtime CEO in January has reignited debate over its euthanasia rates.

Three years ago, four of the 18 board members of the state's largest animal shelter resigned over the issue.

Now, following the departure of former CEO Cal Morgan, an animal advocacy group is calling for the society to hire a new leader who will be focused on increasing the number of animals saved.

In an open letter to the MHS board of directors last week, the Bloomfield Hills-based Michigan Pet Fund Alliance challenged MHS to appoint a CEO "who makes no excuses."

"As fiduciaries for those who entrust homeless animals to your care and/or donate their time and money ... your hiring decisions and operating policies can reduce the number of homeless animals in your service area and substantially increase the numbers that find new homes."

MHS said saving as many animals as possible has always been its mission, and its national search for a new CEO aligns with that.

The MHS euthanasia rate has been declining. In calendar 2010, the nonprofit reported to the state that it euthanized 69 percent of the animals it took in.

Calendar 2013 numbers won't be available until the end of the month, but for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, MHS took in nearly 28,000 animals and euthanized 43 percent of them, said Michael Robbins, vice president for marketing and chief marketing officer. That was down from 55 percent during fiscal 2012.

Paul Huxley, MHS vice chairman

"Anyone who works for our organization or on our board would love to get to a no-kill place," said MHS Vice Chairman Paul Huxley, chairman of Strategic Staffing Solutions Inc.

But MHS' role as a shelter of last resort, given its policy to accept all animals, is at odds with the concept of "no-kill," he said.

"The practicality of how you get to that continues to be a problem when the community continues to breed more animals than there are homes for."

Taking action

MHS said it has taken steps to save more animals in recent years, paying for independent audits of its shelter operations to improve them, launching a shelter medicine program to provide dedicated health care to shelter animals and giving owners the option to come back and get their pet if it was found not to be adoptable by anyone else.

But perhaps the most significant among the new strategies is shifting its intake process for animals surrendered by their owners to appointment only because the vast majority of the animals that arrive at MHS are surrendered by owners — 70 percent of the 24,681 animals it took in during fiscal 2012 and 56 percent in fiscal 2013.

Appointments ensure each animal receives prompt, thorough evaluations of health and temperament and enables MHS to identify the issues that led to the animal's surrender. It can then offer owners options to help resolve those, which leads to some owners taking their pets back home. And it enables more expedient treatment for the animals that are surrendered.

The approach enables shelter staff to better manage their time and to dedicate more resources to animals that need it to become more adoptable.

MHS changed its intake process to appointment-only after benchmarking another of the country's largest open-admission shelters, the Animal Humane Society.

The Minneapolis-area organization decreased its euthanization rates from 37 percent in 2009 to 19 percent in 2013.

Implementing the appointment-only intake process has freed up staff time and resources, enabling the Animal Humane Society near Minneapolis to develop many of the same customized care programs for animals, said director of communications Jeff Moravec. They range from teaching cats to use the litter box to dissuading dogs from aggressive food bowl behavior to dedicating the increased time it takes to find homes for animals suffering from feline leukemia or feline immunodeficiency virus rather than euthanizing them.

With the shifted intake process, "we can help regulate the flow of animals into the shelter, so we're not under- or over-crowded, which really reduces the stress on management of the shelter," he said.

That's helping get the animals adopted out at a higher rate, reducing the length of time animals are in the shelter, said Kathie Johnson, senior director of operations at Animal Humane Society.

"We can help more animals because they are moving through our system a lot faster."

Internal evaluation

MHS looked inward in 2012, paying for two independent evaluations of its operations, one by a certified animal behavior consultant to evaluate its canine evaluation process and the other of its shelter care by Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program at Cornell University.

Among other things, those evaluations spurred better personality matching for people seeking to adopt dogs, the creation of a new advisory body comprised of five national animal medicine and welfare experts to review its evaluations and recommend changes to its board, and the launch of a shelter medicine program to improve the health of the animal population at MHS by providing dedicated care to the homeless animals.

It teamed up with Michigan State University's College of Veterinary Medicine to gain extra hands with high-volume spaying and neutering and contacted owners if a pet was found not to be adoptable and they wanted to pick it back up.

MHS became a noticeable attendee of animal adoption fairs around the area, and, according to Robbins, it now works with more than 100 other organizations to get more animals placed in new homes or with rescue groups.

To try to cut down on the number of animals surrendered and abandoned, MHS offers low-cost spaying and neutering, free food to low-income owners and $5 vaccinations at events in Detroit parks during the warm weather.

Those efforts have helped it make significant progress toward a stated goal of eliminating the euthanization of treatable animals by 2015, Robbins said.

In 2010, the organization euthanized 57 percent of the treatable animals at the shelter because of resource issues, Robbins told Crain's in 2011.

Just under six months into its fiscal 2014, MHS has adopted out more than 95 percent of its treatable dogs and more than 60 percent of its treatable cats, he said. MHS' euthanization rate was down to 33 percent in fiscal 2013.

"The only way you can truly adopt out all healthy and treatable animals is to look at it as a community," Robbins said. "Otherwise, certain organizations are only taking certain animals."

MHS would welcome solutions to the overpopulation problem at its shelters, Huxley said. "Come help; come pick up some animals, treat them and get them homes."

"Don't sit on the sidelines and criticize the organizations that are actually doing that," he said.

Critics point to Macomb

The efforts at MHS are too little and taking too long to have impact, said Debbie Schutt, chairwoman of the alliance, which had fiscal 2012 revenue of about $88,500, about twice the year before, and interim executive director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association.

If overpopulation at MHS shelters is a problem, then "let's stretch; let's do something we've never done before. That's what needs to happen," she said.

Michigan shelters are collectively killing half as many animals today as they were six years ago, Schutt said. "That's incredible progress, but we have the largest organization in the state, with the deepest pockets, that has not made that progress."

On its federal tax form, MHS reported total revenue of $15.6 million and an operating loss of nearly $1.2 million for fiscal 2012 ended Sept. 30, with reserves of just under $22.3 million.

That compared to total revenue of $11 million and an operating loss of $97,469 the year before.

Schutt points to the work Macomb County Animal Control in Clinton Township has done to drop its euthanasia rates.

Over the past two years, it's decreased its euthanization rates from 68 percent in 2011 to 28 percent last year, said Jeff Randazzo, who joined the organization as chief animal control officer last year. The county took in 3,093 animals in 2013.

Randazzo said he's lowered rates largely through the trap, neuter/spay and return of feral or stray cats to their home neighborhoods, rather than euthanizing them. "They're flourishing out in the neighborhoods," he said. "This is controlling the population long term."

He also began providing medical care for animals at the shelter and programs to modify negative behaviors in dogs and socialize shy cats, all with the aim of making those animals adoptable and getting to a no-kill level where animals are only euthanized when it's truly the humane thing to do.

In addition to promoting the adoption of animals on Facebook, he is sharing monthly reports on the number of animals the county takes in, number returned to owners, transferred to rescue groups, adopted and euthanized.

"It's our responsibility to be transparent," he said. "It's the community's shelter; they need to know what's going on and to get active in their community animal control."